External files

Sorry about the previous one, please disregard, my mistake.

Thanks Peter,

I tried Articulate (one of five that I’ve tried) with a test short PPT and didn’t work, probably because I didn’t do it correctly, I’ll have to try again. But if it does work, it seems like an impossible task. I have to convert 10 PPT and each one has many external files (.mpg, .mov, .swf, .avi, and.html). If I understood the process, it’s basically manually, correct? 

If that is the only solution, I may have to go with it and expect to take a long time to complete the project.

Guillermo

Okay, this time I did it correctly and it worked, I added an swf animation to a slide. However, I'm not sure this is what I want. When I open the PPT, the slides do not have the videos. There is a black box. When I play the PPT, those boxes are now the videos. It's as if the PPT had pointers that link the slides to the videos and the videos are loaded when the PPT is played, when the show reaches a slide that contains a video.

I'm afraid what I want to do is not possible. What I want is to publish the PPT, convert it to Flash and somehow create all those links (or embed the videos in the flash, somehow), so when the flash plays, everything loads automatically (magically?)

Hey Guillermo,

Not quite sure what you're asking, but it sounds like you're trying to view Flash video in PowerPoint rather than inserting it properly via Articulate Presenter and then publishing. Sorry for any misunderstanding

I'm the one who's sorry. My English and my lack of expertise with Power Point won't let me make myself clear. But I think I got it.

I must insert all the Flash animations in the corresponding PowerPoint, then publish it. The final result will contain the animations. If I drag the player.html file to a browser window, I should see the entire show, including the animations, correct?

Thank you for your patience

Sounds good, Guillermo  

Let us know if your published version is not working properly. Good luck!

It worked *almost* perfect. I converted and published the first PPT, which has 8 Flash movies. I was lucky that I could find them all fairly easily. But one slide was dropped in the conversion, one of of 118, not bad, but still unacceptable. Any ideas why this may have happened?

Glad to hear we're getting close. Make sure you don't insert more than three videos per slide, and that you're following the best practices found here:

http://www.articulate.com/support/presenter09/kb/?p=76

Thanks for the tips. The dropped slide does not contain a Flash movie, though. It does have an image (a bar graph) but others do too.

One interesting detail I noticed is in the document Info and Edit Links to Files, there are 9 elements there, eight say "video" and one says "worksheet" and under "update" it says "unavailable." I don't know if that refers to that particular slide but the bar graph seems to have been created with Excel (thus, a worksheet)

Hi Guillermo,

An Excel spreadsheet or any table will simply be converted into a non-interactive image. You can check out a workaround from this older thread:

http://www.articulate.com/forums/articulate-presenter/20257-excel-worksheets-powerpoint.html

Hope that's helpful

Well, it was simply a static image, not an active spreadsheet. However, for some reason the slide was missing, it was weird, out of 118 slides, to drop just that one. And I must add that I used a second application (a free trial version) and this one did a better job because all slides were there. I like Articulate's output a little better, though (plus we own it already).

I had to delete the missing slide and re-create it and convert the PPT again. This time it worked fine, and the Flash is already online.

Now, on to the next ones, which I think may be more difficult, so I may be back.

As I predicted I'm back. I was successful converting that PPT. Even the dropped slide is not a problem any more for I found out the slide was "hidden" so it was not supposed to be converted. Good job Articulate. The next few were easy.

But now I'm facing, as expected, tougher challenges. The next PPT has a slide that contains an AVI movie and a slide that contains an MPG movie. I'm trying to convert those two into one of the three allowed formats. Using Adobe Media Encoder I converted the AVI but have not been successful with the MPG.

What would be the recommended way to convert an MPG file?

Once again, thanks

Hi Guillermo,

Do you have our Video Encoder? If not you can try it free for 30 days:

http://www.articulate.com/downloads/freetrial-step1.aspx

I don't; thanks

Oops, I do have it. It was part of what we purchased. Whoa, this is so easy! One more question, how do I pick a settings. I saw in this web page: http://www.articulate.com/products/video-encoder.php, that there are some presets but can't find where.

Hey Guillermo,

Is this what you're looking for?:

http://www.articulate.com/support/video-encoder09/?p=55

No. In the URL I indicated above,

http://www.articulate.com/products/video-encoder.php

there's a list of things that can be done, all under the title "feature tour": Convert part of the video, crop the image, both of which are easy and, as a matter of fact, I'm using both. Then comes Quickly make improvements, Brand it with your logo, and then control over publishing options, where it says:  "Choose from the easy presets or specify exactly what you want for encoding method, bitrate, dimensions, and more. Save your custom settings so they're always available," and a dialog box is shown where users can select encoding method, bit rate for both video and audio, etc.

I'd like to be able to get to that dialog box but can't find it.

Never mind, just found; I was lucky, it was in the least expected place. Thank you.

Today's problem: after successfully converting many videos to flv and converting seven PPT to Flash, I noticed something bad and strange in PPT #8. In the final Flash file, in most cases when a slide contains a movie, the duration of the slide is synchronized with the length of the movie; but in a couple of instances this does not happen, the show jumps to the next slide before the movie ends.

I edited the "duration" and the "advance slide after" parameters in Power Point and that didn't work. The solution I have found is this: in the Articulate tab and in the Slide Properties, selected for those two slides "Advance by User" and although I have not converted it yet, I previewed it, and it seems to work; it stops and waits for the user to advance to the next slide.

Is this the best solution? Why does it work for many slides and all of a sudden does not work in two slides?

From the Insert Flash Movie window, did you choose Advance to the next slide "Automatically when movie finishes" and "Synchronize slide and movie"? With those two choices, the movie should fully play and the slide advance at the end.

Well, I can't say 100% positive that I did but  I never changed those settings, I assumed the defaults were correct; they indicated how I wanted the show to play. However, I just re-converted it without touching anything and it now plays well, go figure.

Forgot to say...thanks! thank you very much

A person going through the flash file created by Articulate noticed something strange in a few slides; they were distorted and then chopped off. See attached articulate version and original version. what could be the problem and does it have a solution?

Can you send us your project here and we can take a look at it for you:

http://upload.articulate.com

Thank you very much, once again!